Eating in Thailand and Laos. Part 3 - Street food in Northern Thailand

Here's another set of my food snaps from this year's visit to Thailand & Laos. Below are snaps of the street food i ate in Northern Thailand - Pai, Chiang Mai & around (would have loved to have gone all over but 6 weeks goes quick).... 1st up Khao Soy - one of N.Thailands most famous dishes, i think Burmese in origin. It's a rich & delicious curry sauce with chicken or beef, noodles, crispy noodles and a selection of garnishes...especially chopped shallots and mustard greens: Mad rubbery pancake things made from red sticky rice - they're grilled and puff up, then on goes sesame seeds and condensed milk. Strangely addictive, always a queue for these. Grachai - relative of ginger - often gets finely shredded and added to certain curries as a final garnish. Rice noodle wraps with a sweetish fried shallot & garlic filling, with a stick to eat and some green bird's eyes for heat. Awesome find on the street in Pai - an interesting variety of sticky rice wrapped in banana leaf with a selection of toppings, these two are sweet shredded pork (defo my favorite) and crispy beef with fried garlic & herbs. Here's one of the best things about heading north: Thai spicy sausage - you get a fermented and non-fermented version. Grilled in front of you. Really good and quite open-textured (not uber dense and meaty like some European snags). Sometimes fragrant with things like lime leaves too. Damn good: Rice flour pancake things baked in cast iron dish...sugar at the end. Locals eating and picking up their take-away from the market on the way home (many Thais do this rather than cook complex food from scratch every night). A far-cry from Mac-Dee's.

Miang!

Ok, in my (humble) opinion Miang are a hidden gem of Thai cuisine. They are basically mad little leaf-wrapped flavor explosions, i think they're great. You rarely see them on Thai restaurant menus and yet they are the perfect starter / palate tickler and can look really slick on the plate. I first read about them in David Thompson's amazing book 'Thai Food', which I cant recommend enough to anyone who's really interested in Thai cuisine...some of the recipes are complex and ingredients required are hard to source, even in London, but i think it's one of best recipe books ever written. p.s you can eat David Thompson's food at Nahm in London...if you can afford it (& perhaps even if you cant!) then you wont regret it! Below I'm gonna stick down a few snaps of some Miang i made for friends recently + the recipe for them, I'll follow that with few snaps of them i took in Thailand then give you couple of links for different varieties. Give them a whirl! Ok so a recipe for Miang Kam (tis a lot of ingredients i know): Filling:

• A handful of grated coconut (*see note below) - toasted in dry frying pan until dry & golden


• 2 small limes - diced v.finely, skin and all if you like a bitter twang, otherwise just the flesh.


• 5 small shallots - diced small


• A handful of roasted roughly crushed peanuts (buy skinned unsalted peanuts & toast in oven until just lightly colored)


• 4 tablespoons of dried shrimp (available at all Asian stores & some supermarkets)


• 4 birds eye chillies, chopped small (seeds in if you like it hot)


• 4 tablespoons of finely diced fresh ginger


• The leaves from one bunch of fresh coriander

* coconut - either shred fresh using a course zester, or my fav option: buy fresh fresh (non dried) from Asian store or supermarket...or use non sweetened dessicated. Sauce:

• 1 large teaspoon of shrimp paste


• 2 tablespoons chopped galangal (use ginger if you really cant get)


• 2 tablespoons toasted coconut (*see below)


• 1 tablespoon dried shrimp


• 2 tablespoons chopped shallot


• 1 small cup of palm sugar (if you've got the hard stuff then dissolve in little water)


• 3 tablespoon fish sauce


• 3 tablespoons tamarind water (tamarind pulp dissolved in warm water, solids removed)

Wrapping leaves: about 30 leaves - ideally betel leaves (see pics) which are hard to find but Thai & Vietnamese supermarkets do sometimes stock (i buy mine on Mare St in London - see link on RHS!). If you cant get betel then baby spinach leaves or little gem will work. Method: To make the sauce

1. pestle and mortar (or blend in hand blender cup) the shallots and galangal together, add the rest of the sauce ingredients except the liquids and pound / whizz again.


2. Add to small pan on medium heat with 1.5 cups of water and the sugar, bring to simmer and bubble well for 3 minutes or so, or until beginning to thicken nicely


3. add the fish sauce and tamarind water, bring back to boil and transfer to small bowl

To serve: either mix all the filling ingredients with the sauce and divide the contents between the leaves, or arrange everything in piles on a platter with sauce in middle and let people make their own parcels...like this: To eat them you just wrap up ...pop the whole package in the mouth and enjoy the flavor sensation! N.B the decent pic's above were taken by my brother Daniel (AKA 'Gandhi') - who came round to take some snaps (& eat the vast majority of the food), he has his own photography website...see here. Some Miang i came across on Thailand this year... DIY Miang packs with everything ready, sold in stores in Bangkok with all you need - if only Tesco's did these! AMAZING flavor sensation this one - pomelo and sweet-spicy garlic shallot peanut and lime leaf paste, with betel leaves for wrapping below. One of the most memorable things i ate on my trip. Miang Lao i think - made in bitter tea leaves, accompanied by chillies and crispy rice crackers. Below - Miang with spicy sausage, sweet rice flour powder, limes and chillies. & finally here's a couple of links to other interesting Miang recipes online... http://gourmettraveller.com.au/hotsmoked_red_emperor_and_pink_pomelo_miang.htm http://www.caterersearch.com/Articles/2006/09/11/200502/gla-bon-round-salmon-with-deep-fried-shallots-sugar-and-watermelon-by-david-thompson.html

Eating in Thailand and Laos. Part 2 - Laos

This is just a snapshot of Lao cuisine...i.e pictures of some of the dishes i ate in my, all too brief, two weeks there. I loved the Lao food, it's not quite as diverse and sophisticated as Thai food, but there's definitely some real gems to be found. Morning produce market Luang Prabang - amazing array of fruit, veg and herbs on display... plus meat & fish (with some small birds, rodents and fish being sold live, and sometimes being dispatched while the others in line watched!). Minced prawns on lemongrass & behind it pork, egg and herb wraps with sweet chilli sauce - both quite Vietnamese in origin i believe. Probably my culinary highlight in Laos - called Nam Nueng. This was basically a delicious and fresh DIY set of fried pork balls, rice noodles, chillies, star fruit, cucumber, garlic slivers accompanied by a huge plate of herbs (sweet basil, coriander, mint, pak chee farang) and leaves (lettuce, betel & rice paper sheets) + a sweet tamarind sauce. So idea is: make a DIY collection of the above, wrap it in one of the leaf options, add some sauce and send it down the hatch! Healthy taste explosions dont get much better. Here's one particular arrangement i made.

Larp - the national dish of Laos is s a type of Lao meat salad. It is most often made with chicken, beef, duck, turkey, pork or even fish, flavored with fish sauce and lime. The meat can be either raw or cooked; it is minced and mixed with ground roasted rice, chilli, mint an sometimes veggies. This one is fish larp, probably catfish (see the poor blighter at the bottom of this post!). Jeobong - a Luang Prabang speciality, made from chillies, spices and buffalo skin! Eat with vegetables and sticky rice (as pictured). Rambutans and Mangosteens, the latter being on my 'top 3 tastiest fruits ever' list. Coffee and doughnuts Lao style - if you find a good street stall you can get absolutely awesome coffee out there. Super sweet condensed milk an optional extra. Finger food at a night market - summer rolls vietnamese style, lettuce leaves with an aubergine paste and some sort of nut in and much more... Street stalls at night - Luang Prabang. The ubiquitous grilled Mekong fish, good it was too. Yep - the title pic above! This is beef noodle soup, it tasted as good as it looked and came with the two accompaniments pictured below.... A kind of satay style sauce to dip your beef in using chopsticks ...and this mad selection of herbs and fresh things to bung in your soup - including pak chee farang, pea shoots, lettuce and all manner of 'erbs, plus limes spring onions, green chillies and snake beans (which look dangerously similar!) and of course there's fish sauce, chilli sauce, sugar, dried chillies, chillies and vinegar and probably other things i cant remeber - just out of shot. All this for 80 pence! Sweet. Might add some more pics to this post at a later date, but for now i'll finish with this snap of a huge (probably 15 - 20kg) mekong catfish awaiting his fate (it was still alive n wriggling).... which i imagine was to be made into a serious amount of fish larp (see above).

Eating in Thailand and Laos. Part 1 - Bangkok street food

I recently spent 6 weeks eating my way around Thailand and Laos. I'm going to put a sample of the pictures with some explanation, and occasionally recipes, up on this blog. I hope you like it, there's plenty more to come! This is the first installment – some snaps and explanation of some of the things I ate on the street in Bangkok (if there’s a better city in the world for street food I certainly haven’t been there). Rice soup often eaten as a breakfast dish, it doesnt look great but, when you add the ginger, spring onion, chilli toppings and crack in a delicious raw free range egg it becomes really satisfying & moreish. A mad arrangement of sweet-savory concoctions - with the aid of much pointing a little old lady will make you a tailored mix to excite (and somewhat confuse!) the taste buds. Chinatown - it has the best fresh seafood stands i've seen anywhere, and they're always jam-packed. We ordered snapper in 3 flavour sauce, stir-fried morning glory and mussels with thai basil and lemongrass. all delicious. This duck noodle soup with feather-light prawn wontons was one of the simplest and most delicious things i have eaten in a very long time. I dont think i've ever tasted duck so good or wontons so delicate. A street stall near hidden down an alley near my my guesthouse in Bangkok - packed everylunch with locals choosing a curry type sauce with pork or chicken and then loading their plates with fresh beansprouts, herbs, roasted dried chillies and pickled mustard greens. All for about 50p! A crispy fish ('pla grop' i think) with shredded green mango, roasted peanuts, chillies and a sweet-sour sauce. An acquired taste, but a fantastic taste and texture sensation, i loved it. Street stalls - where the produce on display is stunningly fresh and the ladies working the woks could take down any michelin starred chef in a wok-off! Thailand has some Muslim communities, particularly in the south. This reflects in the cuisine - like roti's with curry sauce. Yum. hmmm, hard to pin point what goes in to these tasty morsels...i think they are a kind of fried tapioca & spinach-like greens mix. comes with a bag of sweet soy sauce and a cocktail stick to spear them with. Only the most seasoned Bangkok street-eater can tell you what is in a banana leaf parcel just by it's shape, but i soon got to recognise these ones...they contained a delicious mix of sticky rice, banana, coconut cream, sugar and i think some sort of plum...all grilled and caramalised to additive levels of tastyness. Sweet yellow mango and sticky rice needs no introduction...this was the best i've ever had. taaaaaaaaasty! rice flour dumplings with a peanut-fried shallot sweet paste in the middle, top with crispy shallots and eat with green chillies. steamed wonton style rolls with various fillings (pork, cabbage etc) quite chinese in origin i think. Crispy fried balls (of something like semolina i think), sweet nam jim chill sauce and roasted dried chillies.